Research Methods ARE 6746

Sherolyn Rymal High School Art Teacher

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." - Albert Einstein   (accomplished violinist)

I am in my eleventh year of teaching in Lake County, FL as an art educator. My passion for art has been a lifelong commitment to excellence as an artist. I have a B.F.A. in Studio Art. My career experience includes working as a graphic artist and designer for several years before becoming a teacher, and most notable, as the lead graphic designer for Walt Disney Imagineering Florida, Hotel and Resorts Division. Watercolors is my favorite medium and photorealism is my favorite style for paintings and illustrations. I am certified in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator is my favorite software program.

The great thing about my career experience is that I have been able to share my traditional art skills, digital art skills and workplace skills with my students. I taught the course called “Commercial Art” for 10 years at a local high school and now I will be teaching traditional art at another local high school in January of 2015. As a UF Art Ed Graduate student since the fall of 2012, I am looking forward to my Capstone Project. The project topic is exciting to me and I hope to share it with my students in the spring utilizing the initial “Memory Project” as an introduction and complete the Capstone project in the fall of 2015.

Research Topic

Honoring Life Experience:

Connecting students to seniors through art

Rationale:

The rationale for this project is based on several investigations and inquiries into the subject of multigenerational human interactions.

|  1. According to scholarship, there is a need to assist with fragmented families

and help with misunderstandings within different generations (Kaplan, 2008). This is due in part to a decrease in social interactions within the mobile family unit resulting in little or no opportunity to have meaningful relationships with the elderly (Powell & Arquitt, 1978).

|  2. Art educators have been encouraged to help facilitate lifelong learning in art (Timmerman, 1977) and propagate the idea of the purpose and value of art as one for all individuals, no matter what the age (Jefferson, 1987).

|  3. Fostering intergenerative conversations among different fields can help facilitate solutions to aging associated cognitive challenges (AACC) (Whitehouse, 2013).

|  4. The arts are very powerful in restoring purpose, identity and meaning in one’s life as the onset of aging occurs, instead of becoming bored or isolated later in life (Taylor, 1987).

Connections

How does my research fit into the larger picture? I feel that my research fits into the larger picture by addressing an overall societal concern within

the human population.

By purposing to make important multigenerational connections through art,

lifelong learning in art can be advocated for as well as investigated so that more art educators

can look into this important topic for consideration in their own classrooms.

What role will

critical thinking

play in connecting

students to seniors

through art?

What is the impact of

honoring life experience

across multigenerational

communities?

How can art

serve as a

multigenerational

bridge?

Community

?

?

Honoring Life Experience:Connecting Students to Seniors through Art

References:ESTA Elders Share the Arts. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.estanyc.org/Jefferson, M. (1987). Essentials: Adult education programs in the visual arts. Art Education. 40(4), 33-41. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193045Taylor, C. (1987). Art and the needs of the older adult. Art Education, 40(4), 8-15. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193041 Timmerman, S. (1977). Lifetime learning and the arts: A new priority. Art Education, 30(4), 12-15. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192191

?

Research Questions: Overarching essential question guiding my study: 1.How can art serve as a multigenerational bridge? Secondary Questions: 2. What role will critical thinking play in connecting students to seniors through art? 3. What is the impact of honoring life experience across multigenerational communities?

Summary of Methods The research methodology for my Capstone Research Project study will be primarily action-oriented, qualitative research. However, I am proposing that a secondary narrative research methodology component be incorporated into my project. The goal of my research is to connect students to seniors through art. I intend to do this through a multigenerational art project with one of my advanced art classes. My intention is to conduct the project in my art classroom during the first nine weeks of the fall semester of 2015. Through my research, I would like to develop “collaborative relationships with community partners” (Small & Uttal, 2014, p. 936) using action and narrative research methods by developing a project that bridges my local high school to a community senior center or facility. In so doing, I plan to have my students do shared artwork with seniors by visiting a senior facility through planned field trips.

Action-oriented Research

The nine-week research proposal will include initially, art students mapping their own heritage through an art project. Next, students will present their completed heritage art project to seniors before they share a similar mutual heritage and artmaking project with them. 1. McNiff and Whitehead (2014) in their book, Doing and Writing Action Research state that communicability is essential and involves the criteria of social validity together with the criteria of textual validity. These criteria have four factors, which are comprehensibility, authenticity, truthfulness and appropriateness (McNiff & Whitehead, 2014). 2. Artmaking with seniors will result in action research using a community art show as a final reflection. Mills (2014) discusses “qualitative data collection techniques” in the form of a detailed list (Mills, 2014, p. 83). Research data collection techniques will include student reflection journals during and after the project, instructional activities, oral history and narrative stories, interviews using student prompted questionnaires, observation, heritage mapping, visual recordings, and photography. 3. Artmaking with seniors will inform action research data through student reflection of shared art activities. A final, student-created portrait painting of a senior will honor the senior’s life experience, as students work from a photograph in the classroom as reference. 4. Field trips to a senior facility will provide data outcomes from student interactions with seniors. Mills (2014) identifies a four-step action research process model, which he named “the Dialectic Action Research Spiral” (Mills, 2014, p. 19). The model gives teachers a practical guide for how to move forward with inquiries. I intend to use this model, in which the four steps of the action research process are named as “identifying an area of focus, collecting data, analyzing and interpreting data and developing an action plan” (Mills, 2014, p. 20). Additionally, I would like to utilize the action research data collection technique that Mills (2014) identified as “The Three Es”, which are experiencing, enquiring and examining (Mills, 2014, p. 99). The author also states that pausing to reflect and analyze during the research process is essential to success (Mills, 2014). In addition, Mertler (2014) outlines and describes a four-stage procedure for conducting action research as being cyclical and not linear and asserts that the “rigor” in action research is essential for conducting quality research (Mertler, 2014, p. 27).

Narrative Research 1. Gale and Sikes (2006) in their article, “Narrative Approaches to Education Research” state that the narrative research method is concerned with stories and that, “these can be stories as told and they can be stories that we enquire into: narratives as data, data as narratives” (Gale & Sikes, 2006, p. 5). The heritage stories exchanged between the students and the seniors will be a key element in preparation for student artmaking with seniors. 2. Narrative research will culminate in reciprocal heritage storytelling with seniors. Narrative research techniques will include both event-centered narrative research and experience-centered narrative research. In the book, Doing Narrative Research, Andrews, Squire, and Tamboukou, (2008) state, “What is shared across both event- and experience-centered narrative research is that there are assumed to be individual, internal representations of phenomena – events, thoughts and feelings – to which the narrative gives external expression” (Andrews, Squire, & Tamboukou, 2008, p. 5). Therefore, reciprocal storytelling with art students and seniors will display mutual external expression narrative research data that can be recorded in writing as noted in student journals and questionnaires with interview prompts.

What Next? To continue my investigation I need to: 1. Once my proposal is turned in: Touch base with my Capstone Committee to receive input for a final approval. 2. Seek approval for my IRB’s that have been turned in. 3. Once IRB’s are approved, meet with my principal to go over the project, seek approval and discuss steps to get the project started. 4.Inform my students of the upcoming project next spring 2015 when classes resume. Do the “Memory Project” as an intro activity. 5. Survey the senior facilities in my area to check interest and availability of the fall of 2015 as a possibility of partnering with me. 6. Continue investigating research into my topic prior to performing the Capstone project in the fall of 2015.